What is an AAC communication board?

AAC stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. A communication board is a set of tiles, each with a picture and a phrase, that a non-speaking person taps to say what they mean. A talking board synthesises the phrase aloud using the device's own text-to-speech voice, so the tile literally speaks for the person.

How does a tap-to-speak board work without the internet?

The speech is generated on the device itself by the browser's built-in speechSynthesis feature, using voices already installed on the phone or computer. Because nothing is fetched from a server, the board keeps working with no signal at all — load it once and it runs fully offline.

Is a private AAC board really private, or is that just a claim?

In the talktiles app it is enforced, not merely promised. The page ships a Content-Security-Policy with connect-src set to none, which means the browser physically blocks every network request the page could make. Boards, custom tiles and settings live only in the browser's local storage; they cannot be uploaded because there is no path out.

Why does a talking board have no voice input?

Speech recognition in the browser ships your audio to the vendor's servers to be transcribed, which would break the privacy guarantee. Speaking out (speech synthesis) is done entirely on the device, so it is safe; listening in is not, so it is left out on purpose rather than faked.

Augmentative & Alternative Communication, made plain

How AAC talking tiles work — tap a tile, it speaks for you

When speech is hard, a board of tiles can carry the words. Tap one and it says a phrase out loud; chain a few and it speaks a whole sentence. Here is exactly how that works — and why a well-built one never sends a word anywhere.

🙂 Happy

“I feel happy today.”

Try talktiles now — it's free See how it works ↓

The problem: the words are there, the voice isn't

After a stroke, with aphasia, for an autistic child still finding speech, or after a laryngectomy — the thoughts are whole, but saying them aloud is the part that breaks. Pointing, writing, or waiting for someone to guess is slow and exhausting. A communication board turns knowing what you want to say into one tap.

A board bridges that gap. It doesn't invent the words; it just gives them a voice.

How it works: a tile is a phrase, plus a picture, plus a voice

Every tile holds three things — an emoji you can recognise at a glance, a short label to read, and the full phrase it speaks. Tap it and the device says the whole phrase aloud. The coral arcs are the visible “it's talking now” signal, so the feedback isn't sound-only.

These are live. Tap a tile — if your device has a voice installed, it will speak. Otherwise, watch the arcs and caption.

Chaining tiles: the sentence strip

One tile is a phrase. For anything longer, tiles drop onto a sentence strip: tap, tap, tap to build a line, then press Speak and the whole sentence is read at once. It concatenates short words — no grammar engine pretending to conjugate — which keeps it honest and predictable.

I want water please

The strip says exactly what's on it — “I want water please” — in the order you tapped. Backspace fixes a slip; clear starts over.

The colour key: a thin stripe that speeds recognition

Each tile carries a slim edge-stripe following the modified Fitzgerald Key, a long-standing AAC convention (Thistle & Wilkinson, 2009): people, actions, describing words, things, and social words each get a consistent colour. Over time the colour itself becomes a shortcut to the right part of the board. The stripe is deliberately muted — never the only signal, always paired with the word and picture.

PeopleI, you, mum, nurse
Actionswant, go, help, stop
Describinghot, tired, more, bad
Thingswater, food, phone
Socialyes, please, thank you
Questionswho, what, where

Colour is a helper, not a code you must memorise: state is never colour-only — the label is always right there.

Private by construction: the browser blocks the exit

A communication board holds some of the most personal things a person says. Most “private” apps ask you to trust a promise. talktiles makes the browser enforce it: the page ships a Content-Security-Policy with connect-src 'none'. That single line means the page cannot open a network connection — no upload, no analytics, no “phone home” — even if it tried.

Your device

🗂️ Your boards 🔊 On-device voice ⚙️ Your settings

The network ☁️ Servers

Because there's no way out, there's also no need for signal: load it once and it keeps working offline. The absence of a feature is the guarantee.

What else is in the app

Always-on Quick bar

Yes · No · Help · Stop · Wait · More pinned at the top — one tap, positions never move, so muscle memory works.

Caregiver mode

Long-press to unlock, then add, edit and reorder tiles. Edits are append-only so existing positions stay stable for motor planning.

Honest voice picker

Defaults to voices that run on your device; vendor cloud voices are hidden behind a clearly-labelled toggle. Speed and pitch sliders too.

Export & paper backup

The whole board saves as a JSON file to move between devices, plus a print-friendly paper copy for when a screen isn't handy.

Keyboard & large targets

Arrow-key grid navigation, Enter to speak, visible focus rings, a 3-step tile-size control, and reduced-motion respected.

120-phrase starter board

Ten categories, ready to use with zero setup — Quick, Needs, Feelings, Food, People, Actions, Places, Questions and more.

Give the words a voice.

talktiles is free, needs no account, and works the moment it loads — offline, and entirely on your device.

Open the free talktiles app

Opens the live app at sreenivas-sadhu-prabhakara.github.io/talktiles